Liberal Views on Drug Legalization

There has been a debate on legalizing drug use for quite some time now. Most legalizers are liberals, and their views on drug policy are consistent with liberal views on other issues. This paper will outline the liberal view of legalizing drugs. Liberals do not generally trust individuals to make reasonable choices about drug use, and they think government should adopt policies that attempt to discourage drug use. But liberal legalizers do not like using police power to achieve this goal, especially when that power is directed at drug users as opposed to drug sellers. Thus, although liberal legalizers want government to reduce the harms from drug abuse, they prefer approaches other than prohibition. The liberal view on legalization reflects an assessment of the relative harms of drug use versus drug prohibition, and in that sense is similar to the libertarian calculus. But liberals put less weight on consumer sovereignty, and they are not as fundamentally suspicious of government prohibitions as are libertarians. Thus, for commodities viewed as substantially harmful (e.g., tobacco), liberals are willing to consider prohibition, but for commodities viewed as relatively benign (e.g., marijuana), they find prohibition excessive (Boyd 1998). Liberals agree on the fact that prohibition has many undesired consequences. These include the infringements on civil liberties that are an inevitable consequence of attempts to sanction victimless crimes; the corruption and violence fostered in foreign countries by U.S. attempts to enforce prohibition; the increased frequency of overdoses and accidental poisonings that results from the poor quality control in black markets; the increased property crime that results from elevated drug prices; and the violence that results because participants in black markets settle disagreements with guns rather than lawyers. Liberal legalizers argue, therefore, that the arrest and prosecution of drug users is ill-advised and that current...

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...﻿
Drugs: Should their sale and use be legalized?
Pro:
Opening Statement: I am not sure what this group was talking about. She was reading of the paper the entire time, didn’t fully understand, and was confusion.
Premise 1: The war was lost against drugs and drugs have increased yearly.
Rebuttal (con): Legalizing drugs will bring no encouraging impact. Will be used and abused, the number of people using drugs will increase.
Premise 2: Drugs is feeding organized crime and terrorism, brings profit.
Rebuttal: People will find creative ways of getting their hands on drugs. Also, according to the CCA book, drug dealers make less money than people that work in McDonalds.
Premise 3: The ban on drugs is not cost effective. The war on drugs has cost us a lot of money. The legalization of drugs would fix this debt over night.
Rebuttal: This will not stop but we should keep fighting
Closing: The war on drugs is never ending
Con:
Opening Statement: Drugs do far more harm than good.
Premise 1: Has negative effects on the brain, brain cells are infected. Also, almost all countries in the world prohibit drugs.
Rebuttal (pro): Drugs, like alcohol, have the same negative effects on people, they impair the brain, yet alcohol is legal and so should...

...No on DrugLegalization
Everyone will agree that the drug issue in America is prominent. After so many drug related crimes, deaths, and federal spending, debates spur with opposing views in the political arena on how to rectify the problem. One view on solving the problem according to Judge James P. Gray's proposal is to legalize drugs or as legalization advocates call it "harm reduction." This approach believes that drugs use is inevitable and the only way to solve the drug problem is through the legalization of harmful and habit forming drugs such as, cocaine, heroine, and marijuana. Through Legalization, James P. Gray believes drug use and drug related crime rates will decrease. After so many drug related deaths and crimes, America has come too far with the successful War on Drugs to consider surrendering to legalization and committing national suicide.
If James P Gray's Proposal's purpose is to stabilize the drug problem in America, it will fail because drug use will increase. As written in James P Gray's proposal to sell drugs in licensed pharmacies, drug stores will sell drugs lower than street price which will only promote use because of its...

... A Drug Free country
Major debate has been done about the legalization of drugs. People who are for the legalization of drugs believes that drug prices will fall, levels of drug-related crimes would decrease and as a result, have less crowded courts, and drug violence would reduce as well because cartels and mafias would no longer need to fight over drugs. The group that is against the legalization on drugs says that there would be new users, the new users would no longer keep track of their responsibilities, and more users would lead to more violence. William J. Bennet, author of “Drug Policy and the Intellectuals,” believes that the drug problem in the U.S. can be solved. He opposes all the points as why drugs should be legalized. On the other hand, Milton Friedman author of “There’s No Justice in the War on Drugs” implies that the government should not have the authority to tell a person if he or she can or cannot take drugs. James Q. Wilson author of “Against the Legalization of Drugs” also argues that drugs should not be legalized because it would just increase societal problems. I’d have to agree with Bennet and Wilson about keeping drugs illegal. Drugs...

...WANT TO LEGALİZE DRUGS?
In the century of freedom that we are living in, we have started to face this new world’s new problems and new situations such as legalization of drugs. Many people are having dilemmas about druglegalization coming between ethical values and right of freedom. However, surely forbidding something for people’s and communities’ own benefits doesn’t go along with our perception of democracy and freedom. What freedom means is being able to do whatever individuals want without disturbing others’ rights and freedoms. Then we should mainly focus on the “…without disturbing others’ rights and freedoms.” part . Therefore , even if we are not the one’s that are capable of legislating , governments should care about our voices and be careful about this subject; because of legalizing drugs and giving people the right individually use of drugs regarding public’s rights and freedom will cause lots of consequences and problems. Therefore , in this precise situation , drugs should not be legalized in Turkey.
Legalization of drugs will bring some problems with itself. First of all, legalization of drugs will increase drug usage and the number of drug addicts as it will be stabled in our daily lives with power of laws. Therefore drug usage will seem...

...DrugLegalization/Research
The debate over drug prohibition ending has been going on for decades. People worry that it will bring more deaths and crime, but can it really get any worse? The drug war is costly and controversial since we don’t know the outcome. It could be a better solution, where people realize they craved drugs because it was the forbidden fruit and it loses publicity. Or it could cause more deaths since it may be easier to obtain and there’s no consequences if you decide to do it. No one truly knows, but at the rate we’re going, it may be the only solution.
Marijuana. It’s helped many cancer and epileptic patients with relieving pain and with actually eliminating seizures or cancer. Yet is looked upon as the “gateway drug” which causes you to become insane, as the 60’s magazines would say. Then there’s Oxycontin, which is made by the help of heroin, perfectly legal. Yet it is one of the most addictive and abused drugs. This is an ideal example of drug laws failing to stop addiction or deaths. Legalizing drugs would eliminate many problems the government has been facing for a while.
One simple resolution of legalizing drugs would be eliminating drug cartels, which would cause crime rates to go down. Eduardo Porter from ‘’NY times’’ states “When policy makers in Washington worry about Mexico...

...order to get their drug, being able to get drugs for which they're sure of the quality."
Isn't it a gateway drug to harder substances?
"The effect of criminalization is to drive people from mild drugs to strong drugs... Crack would never have existed in my opinion if you had not had drug prohibition. It was drug prohibition- why was crack created? Because cocaine was so expensive." [Cocaine was so expensive because of drug prohibition.]
But what about the morality of legalization?
"It's not an economic problem at all. It's a moral problem. The economics part of it- I'm an economist- the economics problem is strictly tertiary. It's a moral problem. It's a problem of the harm which government is doing. Look, I have estimated statistically that the prohibition of drugs produces on the average, 10,000 homicides a year."
Isn't it good to discourage drug use?
"The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong- and as weak- as preventing people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do... where do you draw the line?"
What scares you the most about the notion of drugs being legal?
"Nothing scares me about the notion of drugs being legal. What scares me is the notion of continuing on the path we're on now,...

...“Although our war on drugs must be fortified with the best laws, enforcement efforts and resources, we would not be successful without your individual commitment to this cause.” -- Mel Carnahan
Just say no? The legalization of drugs has been a huge issue in politics for an exceptionally long time. Many people believe that the legalization of drugs will allow the government to gain more control and therefore reducing crime on the streets. The idea that a state of freedom actually exists in America is hypocritically voided and nullified by our drug laws. Debates regarding druglegalization have divided our society. Whether one thinks that drugs should be banned or not solely depends on one’s influenced morality viewpoint. Why are drugs illegal? If we look at the most broad and common answer, drugs are illegal for our own protection and safety. However, we see many other dangerous and unhealthy activities that are not (yet) prohibited by the government, like smoking tobacco. Therefore, I believe that the government control of drug use is one area which will never fully be under control and does more harm than good. This, however, does not mean that I believe all drugs should be available like candy. I believe that the idea of some form of government regulation and control is a good concept but...